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National governments are not on track to meet ambitious, globally recognized goals to provide universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2030. Nor are they sufficiently shepherding their rivers, lakes, and aquifers through an era of climate change, water stress, and population growth.
Those are the conclusions in a United Nations water agency report that assesses progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 6, a global benchmark that aims to transform the way that water is managed and delivered. The goal encompasses eight targets for drinking water supply, sanitation, watershed management, pollution prevention, and water use. |
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Many First Nations in Canada continue to live without clean water six years after the government began actively addressing the issue, according to a report published by the Auditor General of Canada late last month.
There are 600 First Nations communities — around 330,000 people — in Canada, and many have endured years without safe tap water. In 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to eliminating all long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities by March 2021 by allocating more than $2 billion to improve water infrastructure. Yet, the department in charge of this commitment, Indigenous Services Canada, did not meet the target, leaving many communities with unsafe drinking water. Of the 160 long-term drinking water advisories in 2015, 60 are still in effect in 41 First Nations. Nearly half of these — 28 advisories — have lasted more than a decade. |
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For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud. Featured coverage from this week’s episode of What’s Up With Water looks at: - In the United States, winter storms that swept through the South in mid-February crippled the water system in Mississippi’s capital.
- In Canada, the CBC reports that the Magpie River has been granted legal status equivalent to a person. It’s a bid to protect the Quebec waterway from threats such as hydropower development.
- In business news, a new report finds economic benefits for reducing the strain on the world’s fresh water.
This week Circle of Blue reports on the closing of the largest coal-fired power plant in the American West. |
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| The Great Lakes Ready or Not project is produced by the Great Lakes News Collaborative, a partnership between Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at DPTV and Michigan Radio that explores an essential question: Are Great Lakes residents and leaders ready for the stirred and shaken conditions that climatologists say we can expect? A new piece will be published every Tuesday over the next four months. |
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 | | Farmer Jay Williams pulls a radish from the soil at his Waldron farm. Williams has begun planting cover crops to reduce runoff and unlock soil nutrients, reducing the amount of phosphorus that leaves his farm and enters the Lake Erie watershed. Photo © Dale Young / Bridge Michigan |
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Ohio, Michigan and Ontario have given themselves until 2025 to reduce phosphorus into Lake Erie by 40 percent compared to 2008 levels — a deadline they collectively are not on track to achieve despite throwing billions of dollars at the problem.
As the world looks to the Great Lakes region as a potential climate change refuge, where a hospitable climate and abundant water could attract waves of newcomers in future decades, Great Lakes advocates say its increasingly imperative to keep algae at bay. And climate change itself could worsen the blooms, making action today even more urgent.
Almost everyone acknowledges fixing the problem will require many more farmers to implement practices that reduce runoff. But they split on a key question: Will enough farmers change their ways without a government mandate to do so?
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| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
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 | | Photo © Brian Lehmann / Circle of Blue |
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Water, Texas is a five-part series on the consequences of the mismatch between runaway development and tightening constraints on the supply and quality of fresh water in Texas.
The story of Texas is the state’s devout allegiance to the principle that mankind has dominion over nature. In 2020, the pandemic, climate disruption, and ever-present challenges with water supply and use are writing a much different story of vulnerability to nature’s bullying, and to government’s uncertain capacity to adjust. |
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